Sunday, August 19, 2012

Husk: Lumbering to a Bookstore Near You

For several months this past year, I was working with author Corey Redekop on his upcoming novel. I was his editor for his debut novel, Shelf Monkey, a book about a cult of bookstore workers who are sick and tired of shilling Oprah picks and copies of Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey (OK, in the book he names others, but the books they hate are in that genre) so once a month they meet secretly and present a book to the others, offering an argument for why the book should be burned. If no one can present a reasonable counter-argument defending the book, it's thrown into a bonfire.

Yep, it's a book about burning books, and why sometimes... it's kinda cool. There's a lot more to it than that, and the plot builds to a wonderful conclusion (check it out!).

I waited patiently for his next book to come along, and when it did, I wasn't disappointed. Moments of heartbreak are just pages away from laugh-out-loud hilarity in this story of a guy who wakes up after a fatal experience... on the autopsy table. Oh, and he's a zombie now. A zombie novel told from the point of view of the walking corpse, this book comes at the genre in a new (and often hilarious) way, and despite the many times I've read it, I love it every time. Sheldon decides he's going to try to pass as alive, (he's pushed his intestines back in — the morticians had removed them — so he should be good for now) and hey, he's an actor, so... he can just try out for those creepy-guy parts, right? If only that pesky heart of his could stay put. Despite being undead, Sheldon can't bear the thought of losing his heart. Poignant, funny, and all-out disgusting at times, this book is a must for fans of the walking dead.

After writing the Great Canadian Book-Burning Novel, Corey has set out to write the Great Canadian Zombie Novel. The book is due out very soon (official pub date is October but it'll be in stores earlier), and I urge you all to check it out. And in the meantime, here's a synopsis of the book as told by a kid. Please pass this around!

3 comments:

EsDee said...

I am not a zombie fan, but that synopsis was so hilarious I may have to check it out. The F%$# just came out of no where...

Christina said...

HAHA! Wow, I want to review this one!
If you have ARCs at Fan Expo, save one for me! ;)

Tom Speelman said...

So, is this October release simultaneously US & Canada? Cuz if so, between this and Yahtzee Croshaw's Jam, my October will be set for genre fiction.